Feathered paint brushes: I gave making my own paint brushes a try yesterday, mostly from feathers I had picked up last winter, not knowing what I would make out of them. But making brushes was fun! Now I have to test them a bit more, with watercolors and inks, and perhaps make more of those angelica-brushes …

♦ Monday sketching: Little Monster and Big Monster tend to turn up at my desk time and again, bringing their odd stories to be told in pictures and words. We the three authors, Áslaug, Kalle and Rakel, have a few manuscripts we are working on. What the monsters are up to is still a secret, or still unsolved! But hopefully new books will come out of it before all too long.

The interactive exhibition Visit to the Monsters will go traveling and open in the Nordic House in Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands in April.

Rights have been sold for more books in the Monster series to be published abroad, more languages and titles. Further monster news about that when time comes!

♦ Monday sketch: In Wunderkammer Olbricht in Me Collectors Room in Berlin I picked up the sketchbook when I faced a small shrunken head or tsantsa (Ecuador – Jivaro, 19th century). A very odd and hair-raising item indeed, whether real or not. The thick black hair was incredibly lively, but the face quite ghastly with the lips sewn together. So many rituals connected with death are crazy!